An organizational landscape in transformation

• In Event: Nordic Civil Society and Social Transformations: The Case of Norway

Abstract

The main changes in the organizational landscape can be related to three stages in the development of Norwegian society more in general: nation building, welfare reform, leisure society. This paper will investigate how and the extent to which these stages affected voluntary sector by focusing on changes in the population of associations, or-ganization structures, and patterns of collaboration with other organizations, business and the public sector. The data for the analysis will be surveys of local associations in Hordaland from 1980, 1989, 1999 and 2009, in addition to a national survey from 2009. There is also a survey of national level organizations from 2013 that covers their social role, activity and use of media and internet. The latter survey is also comparable to data from national organizations from 1983 and 1992 (Hallenstvedt, 1983; Hallenstvedt & Trollvik, 1993), in particular when it comes to affiliation with other organizations, ad-ministration, employment and collaboration with national and local governments.
The changes will be observed by comparing main categories of organizations in these surveys and changes over time. Organizations will be categorized according to their main purpose and orientation in the following categories: activity, welfare, society-oriented, interest organizations and religion. Similar distinctions have also been used in previous analysis of the voluntary sector in Norway (i.e. Sivesind & Selle, 2010). The main research question is if the changes in different categories have reduced the organi-zations’ role as intermediary structures. One hypothesis is that the decline of organiza-tions related to popular movements that were important parts of the nation and welfare building stages, such as organizations for farmers, smallholders, fishermen, workers, national health and temperance, led to a decline of society oriented organizations and to weaker connections between the voluntary sector and the public authorities. Another hypothesis is that the growing segment of activity-oriented organizations in the field of culture, sport and recreation has weaker formal structures and are more likely to collab-orate with the business sector than types of organizations prevailing in earlier stages. A third hypothesis is that welfare organizations decline and collaborate less with public authorities as in the most expansive stage of welfare. The main findings are that the importance of the organizations as a channel between the citizens and the central level of political and administrative authorities has been weakened. Still, some umbrella or-ganizations and national organizations continue to be involved in policymaking, in par-ticular organizations that distributes funding on behalf of the government. This means more pluralist lobbying in general, but in combination with selective corporatist relations for the more powerful organizations. This can be related to more general theories about policy niches (See for example Gray & Lowery 1996, p. 95-96): Civil society-state relations depend not only on the institutional linkages between voluntary organizations and government, nor merely on the power distributions that follow from particular structural configurations, but also on how policy-relevant resource in the environment are distributed.

References:
Gray, V., & Lowery, D. (1996). A Niche Theory of Interest Representation. The Journal of Politics, 58(1), 91-111. doi: 10.2307/2960350
Hallenstvedt, A. (1983). Norske organisasjoner. Oslo.: Tanum-Norli.
Hallenstvedt, A. & Trollvik, J. (1993). Norske organisasjoner. Oslo: Fabritius Forlag.
Sivesind, K. H. & Selle, P. (2010). Civil society in the Nordic countries: Between dis-placement and vitality. In R. Alapuro & H. Stenius (eds.), Nordic Associations in a European Perspective (pp. 89–120). Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesell-schaft.

Authors

• Karl Henrik Sivesind, Institute for Social Research

• Daniel Arnesen, PhD student

• Åsta Dyrnes Nordø, Uni Rokkansenteret